Install Nvidia Graphics Drivers on Ubuntu via PPA. Click on the “Additional Drivers” tab and here you can see the list of Drivers. Select the one you wish to apply (install) and click “Apply changes”. I should note that I was able to install the drivers via Ubuntu's generic drivers, but I'd really like to know how to do this for future and also to make sure I have the latest drivers.
Nvidia drivers
If you have an Nvidia graphics card on your system, then its recommended to install the official drivers provided by Nvidia. The proprietory drivers would utilise the hardware properly delivering full performance.
Installation is pretty easy and it uses a ppa repository. So you do not need to compile anything. However, make sure to follow the steps properly.
These steps would work on Ubuntu and close derivatives like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu and also Linux Mint and Elementary OS.
1. Find out your graphics card model
Use the lspci command to find out the model of your graphics card
2. Find out the right driver version for your graphics card
Visit http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx Fill in the details about your graphics card and system and then click Search. On the next page, it should tell you the correct driver version with a download link and additional information.
For the above GeForce 210 card, it showed 331.67 as the correct driver which can be downloaded from the website. However we shall install the drivers from ppa to make things easier.
3. Setup the xorg-edgers ppa
The xorg-edgers ppa provides the very latest nvidia drivers. Run the following commands to set it up.
Now the ppa is setup and the package information is also updated.
4. Install the driver
Either you can install the driver directly by installing a single package containing “nvidia” and the major version number ( 173, 304, 310, 313, 319, 331, 334 or 337).
Or you can enable it from the “Additional Drivers” section. This is different on different Ubuntu flavors.
If you have synaptic package manager installed, then go to Settings > Repositories > Additional Drivers tab and select the correct nvidia driver, and click Apply changes.
If you are running Ubuntu unity desktop, simply launch the dash and search for “driver”. Then click the application named “Additional Drivers”. It will launch the same dialog box as shown above.
Go to “All Settings > Additional Drivers” and you should see a list of all available nvidia drivers ready to be installed. Select the correct driver and click Apply Changes. The new driver would be downloaded, installed and configured for use.
Go to System Settings > System Administration > Driver Manager and select the nvidia driver there and click Apply.
After the installation is complete, reboot the system. You should see an option called “Nvidia X Server Settings” in your applications menu. From there you can check information about the graphics card and configure it.
5. Verify the installation
The last thing to do is verify that the nvidia drivers are loaded and working. Run the lspci command again and this time the kernel driver should show nvidia
Check the last line which says “kernel driver in use: nvidia”. This shows that nvidia drivers are now in action. Also check hardware acceleration with the glxinfo command
The OpenGL renderer string should be anything other than “MESA”. Then it indicates that the hardware drivers are being used for hardware acceleration.
6. Nvidia settings tool
Nvidia would install a gui tool called “Nvidia X Server Settings”
somewhere in the menu. It can also be launched from the command line using the command “nvidia-settings”. The tool shows miscellaneous information about the graphics card and the monitor connected, and also allows to configure various options.
The tool allows to configure the resolution of the monitor. If you are using dual monitors for example, then you can configure the monitor positions as well.
Removing the drivers
Incase anything goes wrong after the installation, like you are not able to boot Ubuntu, then try removing the Nvidia drivers.
Boot into the recovery console from the grub menu and then issue the following commands
Additional Notes
Many tutorials out there talk about blacklisting the nouveau driver. This is no longer necessary, since the nvidia driver would blacklist nouveau itself. This can be verified by checking the contents of nvidia driver files in the the modprobe.d directory.
Note that the files “nvidia-331_hybrid.conf” and “nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf” have blacklisted nouveau.
To check information about the nvidia driver module, use the commands lsmod, modprobe and modinfo
# check that nvidia kernel module is loaded or not
The kernel module file for the nvidia driver is located at “/lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/updates/dkms/nvidia_331.ko”.
Note that it is a “dkms” module which means, its loaded dynamically. Due to this the grub screen, the Ubuntu/Kubuntu splash screens would have a low resolution since at that time the nvidia drivers are not in effect, and whatever resolution is available via the VESA extensions, are used.
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Upgrading to the latest version of the proprietary Nvidia drivers in Ubuntu (or Linux Mint) was pretty complicated a while back. You would either have to use the official Linux installer, which was not always reliable, at least for me, or use a bleeding edge PPA, like the Xorg Edgers PPA, which would upgrade multiple packages, most of which were unstable.
That's no longer the case thanks to the Proprietary GPU Drivers PPA, which offers stable proprietary Nvidia graphics driver updates, without updating other libraries to unstable versions (some libraries may still be updated using this PPA, if they are needed by the drivers, but there's nothing unstable in the PPA).
Despite its name, the PPA only provides proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers updates, with no support for AMD or Intel.
Even though the PPA is probably the most stable way of upgrading to the latest proprietary Nvidia drivers version in Ubuntu or Linux Mint, it's still considered in testing. That means issues may still occur (though I didn't encounter any and I've been using it for some time), so you should only use this PPA if you have experience with recovering your system from a failed graphics driver upgrade.
Even though the PPA is probably the most stable way of upgrading to the latest proprietary Nvidia drivers version in Ubuntu or Linux Mint, it's still considered in testing. That means issues may still occur (though I didn't encounter any and I've been using it for some time), so you should only use this PPA if you have experience with recovering your system from a failed graphics driver upgrade.
Even so, unfortunately this is still the safest (or maybe that's not the right word, let's say the least breakage prone) way of installing NEWER Nvidia drivers in Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
I should also mention that the PPA provides packages for all supported Ubuntu (17.04, 16.10, 16.04, 14.04 and 12.04) and Linux Mint (18, 17 and 13) versions. The PPA provides the following Nvidia Graphics Drivers versions: nvidia-361, nvidia-367, nvidia-370, nvidia-375 and nvidia-378. There are also older drivers, like nvidia-304 and nvidia-340 (but that's not why you are here, right?).
I should also mention that the PPA provides packages for all supported Ubuntu (17.04, 16.10, 16.04, 14.04 and 12.04) and Linux Mint (18, 17 and 13) versions. The PPA provides the following Nvidia Graphics Drivers versions: nvidia-361, nvidia-367, nvidia-370, nvidia-375 and nvidia-378. There are also older drivers, like nvidia-304 and nvidia-340 (but that's not why you are here, right?).
You can check the latest Nvidia Linux graphics drivers version by visiting THIS page.
Install the latest Nvidia graphics drivers in Ubuntu or Linux Mint via PPA
1. Add the PPA.
Before proceeding, please read the PPA description!
To add the Proprietary GPU Drivers PPA in Ubuntu or Linux Mint and update the software sources, use the following commands:
2. Install (and activate) the latest Nvidia graphics drivers
From System Settings or directly from the menu / Dash, open Software & Updates, click on the 'Additional Drivers' tab, select the driver you want to use, and click 'Apply changes':
After the driver is downloaded and installed, restart your system. That's it!
You can also install the latest drivers using Synaptic or from the command line. To see the available versions, you can use:
or:And look for the packages called 'nvidia-VERSION', for instance 'nvidia-378' for the latest 378.09 beta graphics drivers, and install it ('sudo apt install nvidia-VERSION').